A Comparative Study of Piscine Defense the Scales of Arapaima
Journal of the mechanical behavior of biomedical materials xx (xxxx) xxxx–xxxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmbbm A comparative study of piscine defense: The scales of Arapaima gigas, Latimeria chalumnae and Atractosteus spatula ⁎ Vincent R. Shermana, Haocheng Quana, Wen Yangb, Robert O. Ritchiec, Marc A. Meyersa,d, a Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA b Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland c Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California Berkeley, CA 94720, USA d Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: We compare the characteristics of the armored scales of three large fish, namely the Arapaima gigas Scales (arapaima), Latimeria chalumnae (coelacanth), and Atractosteus spatula (alligator gar), with specific focus on Bioinspiration their unique structure-mechanical property relationships and their specialized ability to provide protection from Bouligand predatory pressures, with the ultimate goal of providing bio-inspiration for manmade materials. The arapaima Alligator gar has flexible and overlapping cycloid scales which consist of a tough Bouligand-type arrangement of collagen Coelacanth layers in the base and a hard external mineralized surface, protecting it from piranha, a predator with extremely Arapaima sharp teeth. The coelacanth has overlapping elasmoid scales that consist of adjacent Bouligand-type pairs, forming a double-twisted Bouligand-type structure. The collagenous layers are connected by collagen fibril struts which significantly contribute to the energy dissipation, so that the scales have the capability to defend from predators such as sharks.
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